CNN’s sources say that shortly after Washington’s attack on Iran’s Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school U.S. military officials knew it was based on badly outdated targeting information, Brad Reed reports.
A U.S. destroyer firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28 at the start of the Trump administration’s unauthorized war on Iran. (DoD/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
By Brad Reed
Common Dreams
U.S. military commanders “bypassed warnings” indicating that their database of strike targets inside Iran was badly out of date shortly before launching a deadly attack on an Iranian primary school in the city of Minab, according to a report from CNN.
Three sources told the network that senior military officials received messages informing them that the intelligence behind the target list had been gathered years ago and “needed to be re-vetted.”
Regardless, the proposed Iranian targets were added to a strike list shortly before the U.S. launched an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, killing more than 150 schoolchildren along with over a dozen teachers.
Two of CNN’s sources said senior commanders ignored the warnings out of “expediency,” as they did not want to significantly delay providing target lists during the outset of the war, which Trump illegally launched in February without any authorization from the U.S. Congress.
For months, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly dodged questions about the strike on the school, insisting that he didn’t want to comment on an ongoing Pentagon investigation.
However, one of CNN’s sources said that US military officials “knew within days how the mistake happened,” as the school was targeted based on “obviously old info.”
Hegseth during a Pentagon press briefing on the U.S, unauthorized war on Iran on March 4. (DoW/Alexander Kubitza)
CNN noted that old satellite images showed the school once belonged to the same compound as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility. However, as long ago as 2016, images showed “that a fence had been erected to separate the school from the rest of the base, and that a separate entrance to the school had been built.”
Rutgers Law School Professor Adil Haque, noting that intelligence on many of the targets was more than a decade old, called the U.S. decision to proceed with attacks “inexcusable.”
The U.S. Department of Defense has still not released its investigation into the bombing, drawing criticism from Palestinian-American policy analyst Yousef Munayyer, who reacted to Tuesday’s CNN report by describing the U.S. military as being “quick to bomb, slow to investigate.”
Recovery workers in the rubble of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, Iran, after U.S. forces struck it on Feb. 28. (Mehr News Agency /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
The slow pace of the investigation has also drawn criticism from Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee.
During a May congressional hearing, Smith grilled Adm. Brad Cooper about why the US hasn’t taken responsibility for the school strike despite clear evidence that it was at fault.
“In the past, when we’ve had these type of mistakes, they’ve been quickly acknowledged,” Smith said, “even if a further investigation is necessary to figure out prevention methods.”
Smith also criticized Hegseth for showing a “callous disregard for any sort of rules of engagement or protecting of civilian life” during his tenure as defense secretary.
Last month, President Donald Trump brushed off responsibility for the strike on the school, stating that “mistakes are made” and “war is nasty.”
Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
The views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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a double tap information error
It’s this kind of discovery that confirms, not that it is needed, the fact that the US simply doesn’t care how many people are killed in its forever wars. The US government and the ‘deep state’ don’t value human life at all, not even in their own country.
In this, it has the same deeply evil and depraved belief as Israel – that the more civilians you kill, the more likely your enemy is to buckle under the horror of so many casualties and the resulting pressure by the civilian population to make peace, even at the cost of the country’s sovereignty.
Both countries’ weaponisation of civilian casualties – and, of course, the Israeli-performed, US-backed deliberate, planned genocide we see in Gaza and now Lebanon.
What? Hurrah for the low-hanging fruit of a Hegsethian self-investigation? One where he gets to fire any voice that might rise in protest?
In one swell-foop it’s (by omission) neither intentional nor illegal though it occurs in Act 1 of a larger “joint operation” that itself qualifies as an obvious war crime?
Wouldn’t that mean everything that follows from that initial act is fruit of the poisonous tree, regardless of military excuses such as “mistake” or “collateral damage” in the “fog of war”?
This so-called investigation might rear its ugly head as deliberate negligence against the foundations of a sovereign civilization but it gives off a murderous Zionist stink.
We the citizenry need to wake up and become informed about what is being done in OUR NAMES by OUR financial Services Industry, Military Industrial Complex, Uniformed Military Services, and elected, appointed and career officials of OUR national government! This horrible story is not just some gynocidal faux pas perpetuated by amateur’s, it required the serial misuse of OUR industrial power, skills and wealth, combined with the inept management and regulation of Federal governance.
Here’s some of that aforementioned ‘informed’ stuff that contributes to actually understanding what the dark underbelly of this dastardly behavior is about; and why a modern day bullet, one that costs somewhere between “$2.6 and $4.25 per unit”, does not belong in the hands of a reckless killer of any description.
“The cost of a Tomahawk guided cruise missile ranges from roughly $2.6 million to $3.6 million per unit depending on the production block, specific variant, and contract. You can review the U.S. Navy procurement processes and defense spending breakdowns via Naval Technology or the Department of War {Defense}. Key cost and production details include: Unit Cost: The widely cited average unit cost for the most recent Block IV and Block V models sits between $2.5 million and $3.7 million each. Production Timeline: Manufacturing one of these precision cruise missiles typically requires between 1.5 and 4 years. Export & Bulk Pricing: Block costs for foreign military sales—such as the 400-missile, $1.7 billion package acquired by Japan—can price individual missiles at about $4.25 million when factoring in related support equipment.”
Big enough to mistakenly kill kids but not big enough to take responsibility.
Grande di età, non di umanità o giustizia. Ma di che parliamo?
Di carnefici, di pazzi, di assassini ,di nazisti e l’elenco può continuare.. il problema è come fermare tutto questo genocidio nel
mondo…
Those who perpetrated the ‘double- (or triple-) tap’ bombing against the school, schoolchildren and teachers of Menab must be prosecuted within the US Military Courts system and if that includes Hegseth, even better. Problem is, of course, is that no such Indictments and Prosecutions will ever take place, for the US, in wreaking havoc, destruction and human misery across West Asia for the past 25 years, ever since the deployment of troops into Afghanistan, quickly followed by Iraq and Syria, the blockade, starvation and genocide perpetrated against the people of Yemen, the joint perpetration with israel of Genocide against Palestine, in general and Gaza, in particular followed by the Genocide currently underway in Lebanon and the current joint USrael War against Iran, has never taken any responsibility whatever for what has happened. We are told by our media in EUUSuk that, of course, Wars are the default in West Asia because Arabs, Persians, Assyrians and others are somehow incapable of living in peace but the reality of history prior to the insertion of the ZioNasti Project into West Asia from 1917 followed by the ‘partition’ of Palestine in 1947 and the mass slaughter and attempted extermination of the very existence of a people and a culture that has lived for thousands of years upon the native people of Palestine and every USraeli war that has followed since 1967 under the watchful eyes of the bribed, corrupted and evil Zionist puppets masquerading as American Presidents, members of Congress and Media, is that no such Wars had occurred for many hundreds of years and the Shia, Sunni and Christian populations of West Asia had lived together in peace throughout centuries. Some 50 years ago, when I was 17, I used to believe that the ZioNasti experiment could somehow be eventually controlled so they at least remained within the (non-existent) border set for them by the UN in November 1947 and refrained from interference in both Gaza and the West Bank. Interestingly, by and through Tramp, netanyahu and the political establishment of USrael and EUuk refusing to come to terms with their defeat by Iran and the joint continuing perpetration of carnage against the people of both Lebanon and Iran by USrael, israel has guaranteed its own destruction and I sincerely hope I live long enough to see the collapse of one of the most evil states and societies in human history.
I could not agree more.
Sharing also about your age, and hope.
Bastards. I am so ashamed of what this country has been turned into—a sick and perverted parody of its former self and stature. See you in Hell, Hegseth.
The loss of those children is unbearable. I can’t imagine the suffering caused. No calculation, no outdated statistic, no chain of command can justify a mistake of this scale. It’s a stark reminder of how easily power, distance, and flawed information can produce devastation. But this tragedy isn’t isolated — it reflects a pattern of actions that have caused profound harm under the current U.S. leadership.
What matters now is the willingness to see this tragedy without distortion and lame excuses, and to recognize the responsibility it places on those who hold power.
Yes, Mr. Moron Prezudint, wars are nasty, so quit trying to prove your so-called “manhood” by sending people to die fighting illegal ones, that mainly take the lives of innocents. You sicken me.